


Her

by AndraB74



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:48:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25034980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndraB74/pseuds/AndraB74
Summary: "And by late summer he notices that sometimes when she’s drunk, she holds onto him just a little too tightly, curls into him just a little too familiarly, looks into his eyes with just a little too much shine in them. His heart aches for her. He knows all too well the pain of loneliness, the way it makes you seek love in impossible places. He gently peels her away, but doesn’t stop her from pulling him forward to dance."Characters tell the story of their relationship with Nairobi through both heistsChapter 1: BerlinChapter 2: BogotaChapter 3: Helsinki
Relationships: Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa & Nairobi | Ágata Jiménez, Bogotá/Nairobi | Ágata Jiménez, Helsinki | Mirko Dragic & Nairobi | Ágata Jiménez
Comments: 18
Kudos: 44





	1. Berlin

_Chapter 1: Berlin_

The first time they meet, she knees him in the balls.

He probably deserves it – he forgets himself sometimes; that ego of his gets in the way when it comes to women. He laughs it off. “You’re a firecracker, señorita,” he tells her with a charming smile. She threatens to shove her cigarette down his throat if he ever touches her again.

She acts tough, but she’s just a girl, like the other one, with their inane banter and their inconvenient crushes. He watches them together, giggling about sex and boys like a pair of schoolgirls. But he expects it may be better this way – women do not respond to authority the way men do. They’re social creatures, not hierarchical ones, and he fully expects these two to give him trouble inside the mint. Better if they’re sleeping with someone – that way at least there’s an emotional carrot he can dangle to ensure their compliance. 

But if she’s sleeping with any of them, she’s doing a surprisingly good job hiding it. She goes for Helsinki first, before realizing the giant is gay, then quickly turns her attentions to the Professor, whom he knows is a lost cause. He toys with the idea of taking her himself – Tokyo is the more attractive of the two, to be sure, but it’s obvious she’s already sleeping with the kid, and getting in the middle of a love triangle would be tacky. She’s not his usual type by any means – she’s young, immature, coarse, and lacks refinement, with her ostentatious clothes and her cheap jewelry. But she has an appealing figure, as she’s quick to reveal, getting shirtless in front of the whole class. However, in the end, he decides against it – after all, he’s a professional.

She has a sharp tongue, which she seems to enjoy directing at him. He laughs her off. She thinks he doesn’t notice the way she rolls her eyes when he speaks, but he’s not an idiot. He knows they don’t see eye to eye on many things. But he’s not bothered by it – there have been many who have disagreed with him or disliked his ideas. As long as she respects him, there is no war between them.

Indeed, with time she surprises him. She’s not intellectual the way he and the Professor are, but she has good instincts, especially when it comes to interpersonal matters. He sees the way she weaves the group together, tugging at strings to draw everyone into a circle with herself at its heart. She befriends Tokyo, which gives her Rio as well, she flirts with Denver just enough to make the poor idiot think he has a chance – she even spends time politicking with Helsinki and Moscow, asking them questions about their pasts and soliciting their help and advice. She’s a clever one, he admits begrudgingly. Building allies now could serve her well inside. But Helsinki and Oslo are soldiers, and they’ll obey his commands. Democracy only gets you so far, sweetheart.

As planned, once inside the mint, she oversees the printing of the money and controls the quality of the bills being printed. She surprises him once again – inside the mint, the giggling schoolgirl is nowhere to be seen. She works with a devotion to her craft that is rare. Few people see the art in crime anymore, the beauty of the peculiar mix of precision and chaos found in a perfect heist. He doubts she is a true artist, but she is certainly a dedicated craftswoman, and her interpersonal instincts make her the ideal person for herding and managing the twenty hostages charged with working the machines. While he’s babysitting Tokyo and Rio and mediating their lover’s quarrels, he can at least trust her to manage her work, and that’s a relief.

Indeed, by the second day of the heist, he’s starting to think she might be the only other person on the team with any sense whatsoever. They’re like a troop of children, acting on their feelings, taking needless risks, challenging his decisions left and right. Tokyo dangles a gun around like it’s a toy, Rio can’t even control a teenage girl, even the normally sensible Moscow decides he needs to take a stroll on the roof in the middle of a damn heist. While she’s as pissed as the rest of them that he ordered the execution of a hostage, at least she can move on and focus on her job.

In fact, she keeps the hostages working with remarkable efficiency. By Sunday, they’re ahead of schedule, with over three hundred million euros already printed. His colleagues’ messy personal lives aside, everything is going smoothly – until it’s not.

She’s the one who breaks the news to him: he’s on television. As he watches the news spreading filthy lies about him, he feels his blood boiling into a white-hot rage. Her charming commentary isn’t helping. He snaps, grabbing her throat and pinning her to the desk, needing to see the fear in her eyes. Fear is a form of respect, perhaps the purest form – it’s respect for someone’s ability to take your life. As he squeezes her neck, she gasps, terrified, attempting to fight him but failing, the smirk wiped clean from her face. She yields to him, and he releases her. She gasps, choking. He may have been harsh, but such measures can be necessary for maintaining respect and control. 

Certainly as she runs after him, desperate, she is no longer lecturing him. Now when she cries for him, her voice is anxious, distraught. She tries to talk him down from his rage, but she is naïve if she doesn’t see that this is the kind of thing that ruins reputations, ruins lives – Denver disrespected him in stealing that jacket, and now he must pay. 

And then to find Senorita Gaztambide alive? He’s willing to admit it may be a good thing. Blood is messy. But this disobedience is a problem. He draws his gun on Denver, and she draws her own on him. Her eyes are written with fear, both of theirs are. That is good. “It is far safer to be feared than loved” – Machiavelli was an intelligent man. But he finds that there is often even greater beauty in his lesser known musings. A personal favorite is, “If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.” Injury to Denver would be needlessly disruptive – it would undoubtedly result in mutiny, and it would ruin any chance of a clean heist. So he smiles, and he graciously allows life to win.

It’s the right choice. She hits 400 million euros that evening, and Moscow reaches dirt in the tunnel. The plan is working. He sits her down that evening, ostensibly to discuss their strategy for dealing with the hostages – but in truth, it’s a test for her. After his little show this afternoon, he’s pleased to find her much more receptive to his leadership – she marches the hostages in and out like a little soldier, only interrupting his monologue on virginal rebelliousness once, though he can practically feel her seething behind him. She’s back in line.

Which is good, for that night, the first true test comes – sixteen hostages escape, taking Oslo down in the process. They’re losing control. He’s losing control.

The next day, tensions are starting to heighten, and he charges her with half of the hostage payoff negotiations. She’s the only other member of the team whose judgment he has any faith at all in by now. But even she is losing it – seeing Oslo’s lifeless body affects her, and she challenges him again. They’re so emotional, these people. They agree to rules in theory, but then when it comes time to follow them, they make decisions with their hearts instead. That’s why democracy always fails eventually. It fails now, too – he pulls his gun on her, and she returns the gesture, a steely determination in her eyes. He must admit, she stands her ground with tenacity. Helsinki diffuses the situation, and she cries. She has so much pain, so much passion and feeling for a man she barely knows. It’s curious to him. He wonders what it must be like to be so filled with emotion.

Emotions get out of hand again that evening after the Professor misses the third straight check-in call. They deduce where he’s going with two wine glasses and a bottle in hand, and she tells him off, outraged by his personal relationship with a hostage. It’s an instinctive female competitiveness. This, in his opinion, confirms that she hasn’t been sleeping with anyone – fulfilled women don’t judge men for their intimate activities.

However, he still trusts her judgment enough to allow her to be the deciding vote in their little democratic poll on whether to wait for the Professor’s final call or implement Plan Chernobyl. He correctly guesses that her loyalty lies with the Professor and the money, not with her friends. She doesn’t have the recklessness of the other three. 

And she comes in handy a second time that day as well, when she interrupts Tokyo’s little game of Russian roulette. The two women curse each other, trading verbal swings through the door, until Tokyo lands the big one. She’d had a son, he finds out – a son she abandoned to go get pills, a son who she hasn’t seen in years. A heartbreaking story, to be sure. The classic tale of the young, poor, single mother who turns to crime to support her child then has the child taken away when her crimes are discovered. Poetic injustice, truly, but it seems to affect her quite sharply. He files this away. It may be just the emotional carrot he needs at some point.

Thankfully, she manages to cool Tokyo, and she unties him from the chair. He sees a worry in her eyes that he can’t help but find endearing. She’s beginning to care for him.

But after he releases Tokyo and sedates Rio, she lays into him, harping angrily on his decisions. He feels the rage building inside him again at her lack of respect for his command. He’s in charge, dammit, not her, and he’s growing tired of everyone acting like this is some sweet little democracy. They don’t have time for that – these situations require quick decision-making and an iron fist. The women don’t understand that, blinded as they are by all of those damn feelings.

But control is slipping through his fingers. Rio is the next to rebel, with his enchanting little speech to the hostages. Once again, he must strike fear into their hearts, and he points a gun at the boy, who falls to the ground in terror. Then she shows up, pointing her gun at him for the third time in two days. That, he can handle. He could handle her destroying his morphine as well – pain is an old friend of his by now. What makes him furious is her mockery of him and his leadership. He shoots out of frustration, then goes to take the Professor’s call. That’s when everything goes dark.

He’s not out long, and when he awakens his head is bloodied and throbbing. She’s staged a coup. He must laugh actually – it’s like a group of children tying up their parents, with no sense of the weight and responsibility of authority. But perhaps this is a good turn of events. It will be less than a day before they hand power back to him, and power granted willingly is much easier to wield. So he abides by her coup, enjoying toying with her as she hovers over him menacingly. He’s starting to think she’d be quite fun in bed – she’s a spitfire, and he’s always relished a challenge.

So she takes the reigns. She is not a bad leader – she doesn’t let any lingering hard feelings between them prevent her from making the right decision regarding who should do the live interview, and she keeps the hostages working, speeding up the printing rate. She’s not too proud to come to him with questions, to hand over the phone at the right moments. She has a competence and practicality that the others lack, and he is willing to respect that. He follows her command, and they work together. They make an excellent duo.

Of course, she has a fantasy that fair treatment and kindness will be enough to ensure the hostages’ compliance. This is a laughable fiction, as becomes evident when there’s another rebellion less than a day after her coup and Arturito manages to get a real gun pointed at Denver’s head. He sees the anxiety and frustration on her face and knows it’s only a matter of time now. Sure enough, by evening, she cracks, crumbling and under the pressures of leadership, and he gracefully resumes his command. Truthfully, she made it longer than he expected, and with fewer disasters. He sends her to the office for a nap, and she walks away with an air of defeat. 

He finds her there an hour later, asleep on the sofa, her hand gently dangling from its edge. He has often thought it beautiful, the innocence and vulnerability of a sleeping woman. He traces her wrist delicately. He would never take advantage of a woman, of course; he is merely an artist appreciating the beauty around him. But then there are shouts from the lobby, a commotion, and the roar of an engine. He shakes her awake – “ _Vamos_ ,” he tells her with urgency – then they run downstairs together to find Tokyo sitting on a motorbike in the middle of the hall – and Moscow falling to his knees, his stomach bloody.

She cries out and runs to Moscow. As they all crouch around him to examine the wounds, she assumes control, running for the first aid kit and running the IV. He retreats to the office to call for help from the outside, but time is running short. They must get out soon. Once Moscow is stable, he sends her back to the machines. This time, he joins her. She works with a desperate ferocity as they pack money and start moving it down to the tunnel. She no longer has patience for his ego musings, snapping at him more than once. But there isn’t time for petty fighting anymore. 

They work through the night, all of them – she oversees the machines while he barks commands at the hostages charged with packing the money. They work with the extreme efficiency only true urgency brings about. But come morning, she finds him, her eyes brimming with emotion. “Moscow doesn’t have long,” she tells him. He sighs. It saddens him, truly. They go together to where the old man rests in the lobby and give him their parting appreciation and respect. Once again, she is moved to tears beside him, as Denver holds his father’s hand and sobs. He places a hand on her back, intending it as a gesture of comfort. She looks at him briefly, surprised, but she doesn’t shake him away.

The funeral is brief. It must be; time is short. They break through the tunnel soon after – Helsinki comes to let them know the Professor is coming through, and the two of them glance at each other briefly, eyes connecting in a moment of joy. They hug him, allow him to pay his respects, but then the Professor retreats to the hangar and they continue moving the cash. As they coordinate the exit, the Professor is frank with him: The police are on their tails. It’s time to go. He finds her, tells her to stop the machines. She brushes him off, determined to make it to a billion. He would laugh at her if they had the time for it – it’s classic faulty decision-making, the kind he’d been just starting to think she might be above. But he can’t take the time to explain this to her, to reason with her. Not with the police about to enter. So instead he drops the emotional carrot he’d had up his sleeve. He hits her where it hurts most, drawing out her shame to force her to reckon with her own poor decision-making skills.

What he doesn’t expect is that she’ll hit him right back. She laughs at him, and spits out a harsh truth about the woman he’s been sleeping with. He freezes, feeling that familiar rage rising inside him. He’s been a fool. He’s known, of course, that Ariadna was nervous, that being with him was not always easy for her. But Ariadna had this fragility to her that had moved him, made him believe that he could save her, protect her, whisk her away for a romantic final chapter on an exotic beach somewhere. To have these words hurled at him – rape, sick – well, it’s an unfortunate blow to the ego. He feels that familiar tightness that only happens when someone exposes a crack in his façade. Humiliation has never been a feeling that suited him well.

They move the money out frantically, then he sends her down to the tunnel. It’s time. He grabs Ariadna, and runs downstairs with Helsinki.

She’s in the tunnel, still moving the last packs of money, waiting for him. He sends Tokyo and Rio into the tunnel, and then it’s just them and Helsinki. She comes to get him, shouting _vamonos_ , and he shakes his head. She pauses, meeting his eyes, and they have an entire conversation in microexpressions. She knows what he’s about to do. The police are heading down the stairs and he commands her to leave. She fights him, desperately, physically shrugging Helsinki away, yelling at him to come with them through the tunnel. It’s her final act of defiance.

He doesn’t blame her for what he’s about to do. She was just telling him the truth. In fact, he’s grateful, for this ending will be far preferable to an ending marked by humiliation from a woman he thought saw him as a hero. No, this ending will be grand. He’ll truly be a hero now.

He orders Helsinki to take her away, and the large man grabs her, pulling her towards the vault. As she leaves, she cries, her eyes welling with tears, shouting that she hates him. And despite all of their differences, all of their disagreements, all of the times they’ve pointed guns at each other’s heads or traded verbal slaps, as she is dragged kicking and screaming into the vault, he knows that she cares about him. And that in spite of everything, she still respects him. She probably wouldn’t believe it, but it means the world to him.

He goes out with a bang, a hero until the end.

And then he awakens at the house in Toledo. But it’s not the house in Toledo – it’s brighter, sharper, clearer. The air is sweeter, the grass greener, the sunshine softer. Oslo is there, and Moscow. There are others here on this side, too – there are whole worlds to explore, and somehow the laws of physics he’d grown used to don’t seem to apply here. It’s not heaven, nor hell. It’s just the other side.

Time passes differently here, so he doesn’t know whether days or decades go by before the day comes that he turns and sees her lying on the grass, a flower in her mouth and a smile on her face.

He smiles at her. She looks at him, curious, but beginning to understand.

“Señorita,” he says, reaching out a hand to her. “Welcome. We missed you.”


	2. Bogota

_Chapter 2: Bogota_

He’s taken by her immediately, with her dark eyes and her thick hair. She has a playful energy, a natural flirtatiousness. There’s a sparkle to her eyes and a swing to her hips that he finds intoxicating. He finds himself following her around, sitting next to her during meals and finding her side during gatherings and lessons. He banters with her, teases her, compliments her. She shoots the teasing right back and lets the compliments ping off her. She doesn’t need them, he realizes. She already knows she’s great.

He calls her _mi amor, mi vida, bonita_. He puffs his chest. He touches her – gently, lightly, on the arm, or the back – whenever he gets a chance. He leans in, teasing her suggestively. She laughs at him, knowing this game, and puts him in his place. It just makes him want her more. He craves the touch of her smooth olive skin, the scent he picks up when she’s near him – exotic, like incense and spices. He imagines her in his arms, moaning with pleasure.

They’ll be working together on processing the gold; they’ll be diving together. She approaches her work with a confidence that’s rare in a woman. She gives him orders without second thought. He obeys. How could he not?

He brags about his virility, shows her his children, acts macho to prove he’s man enough to handle her. After all, she’s quite a woman. But he overshoots and misfires. She shakes her head, tells him off. She’s a woman whose respect must be earned, and it’s clear that he has a long way to go.

As the weeks roll by, attraction turns slowly to admiration. She may be gorgeous, but when it comes to work, she is all business. She peppers him with questions about the welding process. He shows her how to use the tools, demonstrates the set up. Her questions are pragmatic, intelligent, focused. He explains with patience. They practice together for hours, until they’re both sweaty and soot covered. But he enjoys the time he spends with her more than any other time. They laugh together. She tells him stories of the Royal Mint, stories of her time in prison, stories of her counterfeiting business. He’s continually impressed by her energy, optimism, and professionalism. She starts asking him questions about himself. How he started welding, what he did before that, how he knew the Professor.

Soon she’s more than an attractive woman – she’s a companion, a friend, someone he feels genuine affection for. He has an instinct to protect her, to come to her aid if needed, to be there for her.

She’s tough, but beneath it he senses a vulnerability, a hunger for love that she rarely shows the world. He sees the way she loves the others – the way she comforts Tokyo, with a soft embrace and a knowing look, the way she defends Helsinki, the big bear of a man, as if he’s a hurt child, the way she holds Cincinnati with a loving wistfulness in her eyes that spoke to the lost son he’d heard mentioned by others, but never by her. She gives her love freely, like a mother, without expecting anything in return. But even mothers need someone to hold them at night, to rub their shoulders and kiss their neck and care for them the way they care for everyone else.

He can only hope to one day be considered for that role.

When they enter the bank together, the energy is electric. She’s in top form, raising everyone’s energy with her own, bellowing commands, stressing the urgency of their task. They had practiced for this dozens of times, they all know their roles. It flows like clockwork. He welds the connecting chamber shut in the nick of time, then he’s there, suspended in water, surrounded by ninety tons of gold. And then she joins him, and she hugs him, her eyes smiling behind her scuba mask, and he feels like he’s on top of the world.

He gets cocky, and takes the flirty banter a step too far. Another misstep. She demands respect, and he yields. Time is still of the essence. The job needs their attention. When things go awry, they exchange a half second glance, and he knows what he must do. He faces death willingly, knowing it’s necessary to buy the others the time they need.

When he exits the vault holding the red cases, she throws her arms around him, relieved. And for a brief moment, he embraces her. It’s a feeling of gratitude, of kinship. He wants to hold her for hours, but she doesn’t linger. There’s work to do.

They fly. She’s the kind of boss who works with such passion and devotion that everyone else naturally falls in line, out of respect. No tough guy could complain about working sixteen hour shifts in the boiling heat when she was there, with twice the energy of anyone else, barely stopping for a breath, much less lunch or a nap. But he knows she’ll burn out at this pace. So he takes her aside, makes her sit, makes her eat. He sends her upstairs for breaks, for naps. “They won’t rest if you don’t,” he tells her, “and they need to rest if they’re going to keep at this.” She nods.

The work is grueling, but he finds that the time passes quickly when she’s there. They rib each other like old friends, any preexisting tension melted away by the strange confines of their underground chamber. They’re focused, but that doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy themselves. They play music, and she habitually sings and sways her hips as she works, and as much as he appreciates it, he knows she dances for herself alone. That’s how she is. She lives her life with passion, with vigor, with sincerity. 

She’s a woman with the balls to change between her wetsuit and her jumpsuit in front of five grown men without batting an eyelid. When he sees Matias ogling, he yanks his head away and smacks the back of it.

They can tell – the welders see him watching her, see the way his eyes crinkle when she speaks, see how his voice gets deeper and softer when he talks to her. The others can tell too – Tokyo sees it, and drunkenly pokes fun at him for it. Matias takes to calling them Mama and Papa in jest. She shoots back that if she brought him into this world, she can take him back out of it.

But he could swear that by the third day inside the bank, she’s teasing him more, finding excuses to be near him, smiling at him knowingly. There’s a sparkle in her eyes that gives him hope.

And then, in a split second, his hope is destroyed. Everything shatters. She’s lying next to a broken window, blood spurting from her chest, and for the first time in many years, he feels pure, sheer terror.

There’s a moment, as they wheel her frantically to an office for treatment, that she looks into his eyes and he sees his own terror mirrored on her face. She doesn’t want to die. She has so much life still in her. They move quickly – there is no room for hesitation or missteps.

The terror doesn’t subside, he just becomes numb to it. They decide to operate. She resists, she cries, begging them to release her, terrified, and he hates how helpless he feels. They put her to sleep, and like a punch to the gut, he realizes it’s unlikely that she’ll ever wake up.

He retreats, in shock. He goes back downstairs. They must go on, they must keep working. And so they do, but now it’s under a dark cloud. They’re a bunch of lost boys without her. He releases the tension through work, pushing harder, moving faster, moving gold out of the vault as if his life depended on it – or as if her life depended on it, for maybe it did.

Then comes the news: she’s stable. She’s recovering. For the first time since he saw her lying on the ground covered in blood, he dares to hope.

She’s lifeless, hooked up to tubes and respirators, but the steady beeping of her vital signs continues. He looks at her, lying on the table, eyes closed, hair spread around her. She looks so vulnerable. He takes her hand in his and holds it, even though he knows she can’t feel it – or perhaps because he knows she can’t feel it.

He finds himself having difficulty focusing whenever it’s been more than an hour since he’d last laid eyes on her, a voice in the back of his head worrying that something had gone wrong and he’d be the last to know, forty-eight meters underground as he is. To distract himself, he makes her the only kind of gift he knows how to make – not a useless gold trinket, but something she can use. She won’t be content to spend days resting on a sofa until they lift her out of the bank with them – she’ll need a way to get around once she’s awake. The dangers haven’t subsided yet.

He doesn’t sleep at all – any time not in the foundry is spent by her side. He just can’t stand the idea of her being alone like this. She’s unconscious for more than twenty-four hours, but it feels like longer.

Then Tokyo radios him – one of the governor’s security guards has escaped. Gandia. They’re going off to search for him when suddenly the steady beep from the heart monitor Tokyo keeps on her waist speeds up – drastically. His heart drops. Without thinking, he runs.

He finds her. She’s awake, but her breathing is short, her eyes are frightened, her face is spattered with blood. She reaches for him, like a child seeking comfort, and he takes her hands in his. He holds them gently, he stays by her side. He’s as scared as she is. She grips him tightly, and he wants her to know that he’s there for her, that he cares, that she is loved. It’s the most intimate moment they’ve had. Terror knocks down their walls, strips them of the time for teasing and flirting, makes them see how they’ve come to depend on each other. 

With Gandia on the loose, everyone is on edge. But all he sees is her. Her pulse goes back down to normal, her breathing evens out, and with Paquita’s help, they clean her up and change her bandages.

He stays by her side for hours, gently looking after her, feeding her, keeping her company, keeping her safe. He feels grateful simply that she is alive. That’s enough for him. That those shining eyes and that beautiful heart remain next to him on this earth is more than he expects or deserves, and seeing her smiling again lifts his spirits in a way he didn’t know they could be lifted.

But something has shifted in her as well. There’s a tenderness in her eyes where there used to be only a sparkle. There’s a vulnerability in the way she reaches for him where there used to be only strength. Though perhaps vulnerability is strength. That’s how it feels to him, baring his heart to her. Their eyes meet, and they hold the gaze, and words don’t feel necessary – words are too hollow, too ordinary to describe this feeling. They just understand.

He is fantasizing again, but this time, it’s not her moaning underneath him, but rather, a fantasy of waking up beside her every day, of her holding his child in her arms, of her walking towards him in a white dress, smiling.

But nothing goes to plan. Tensions rise, Tokyo falls. The love for her friend is clear as she curses Palermo. He feels blind rage for the man who released the psycho that tried to suffocate a sleeping, wounded, unarmed woman. But they must keep going.

With Paquita’s help, he unhooks her from the machines, re-ties her bandages, helps her dress. He gently takes her arms in his and lifts her, helping her into the chair he’d built. Their eyes catch for a moment as he holds her in his arms, but he averts his gaze. This isn’t the time. He shows her how to use the chair, and she drives it with determination to the foundry. She is a force that will not be contained, unable to reckon with her own fragility.

She speaks with passion, with love, with honesty. They must continue. They must keep going. They must take fear by the hand and live with it, she says. He watches her, on her feet a day after having part of her lung removed, thinking only of her team, and he is humbled. He’s never met a single person like her in his life, man or woman. She’s incredible.

So when she teases him again, and he catches the sparkle in her eye, his heart skips a beat. She speaks of a future together, a knowing smile on her face, asking him, daring him. He leans forward slowly and kisses her, softly, gently. But she wants more. She stands, clutching him, and he steadies her, breathing in her smell, feeling her warm body pressing against his. Their mouths find each other’s again, and it’s deep, it’s passionate, it’s two months of feelings being released as they melt into each other, yielding to the feeling between them. It’s desire, it’s respect, it’s admiration, it’s humility, it’s gratitude, it’s longing, it’s affection. A short time ago, he had craved her body, but now he craves her spirit, her soul. But she’d have him crave her body as well – she moves his hand and he squeezes her gratefully, and for a moment, all of the fear and tension fades, and there is only her, only them.

Then they’re jolted, and reality sets in. He must get her to safety. The power flickers back, and she’s still in his arms, but she’s scared. They take shelter in a restroom, but then the call comes for reinforcement, and she urges him to go. He’s needed. He nods obediently. She’ll be alright there. There’s only one door, and she can shoot as well as he can.

She isn’t alright there. 

The ring of gunshots from below makes his heart drop. He runs to her. But this time he’s too late. Gandia shoves her head through a door. She’s shaking, crying out in pain. He’s powerless, terrified. They watch helplessly as the psycho puts a bullet through her hand. 

He shakes with rage. They sing, a hymn, and the whole thing is surreal. For the first time in a long time, he feels a desire to kill. To rip a man apart, limb by limb, to bash his head into a bloody pulp. 

It’s a standoff. They crouch, desperate, uncertain, guns raised, for what feels like an eternity, hearts beating, bodies numb. Her face in the door is twisted in pain, in hatred, but her eyes still have a glint of steely determination. She goads Gandia, mocking him, summoning all her strength to try to get him to put a bullet through her body so that they have a clear path to kill him and save Tokyo. He’s grateful when she fails.

Then Gandia drags her out, his gun resting just behind her ear. They follow him slowly, tensely, as he backs into the hall, mocking them maniacally, moving her like a rag doll, battered and helpless. He channels his fury into mechanical concentration, waiting, desperate, for the moment when his bullet could destroy that monster without hurting her.

Gandia releases her slowly, and it’s just a second, a brief second – Gandia takes his gun off of her head and takes his eyes off of their guns.

He tenses his finger over his trigger.

And in that split second, two realities play out side by side, a flash before the eyes that shows a vision not of what was, but what could have been.

There’s shot. A smoking gun. A body crumples to the floor, taken down by a bullet straight to the forehead.

Gandia is dead.

She falls, catching herself on her hands, breathing raggedly, and he goes to her, holds her. She’s okay. It’s over. She’s okay.

They clean her hand, sew it up, bandage it, clean her wound, fix her stiches. She’s riddled with holes, but she’s a survivor. He stays by her side, holding her other hand in his. Her eyes are full of gratitude. He kisses her forehead and cares for her, once again thankful that she’s still with him on this earth.

Then they go back to work, extracting the gold. She can’t work, but she sits, barking orders, zipping around in her chair. And at night, when they take their rest, they lie together, whispering, holding each other. She’s still too weak for anything more intimate, but she needs to be reminded of this more than once.

Nothing goes smoothly, but somehow each twist is foiled, each plot anticipated – and then it’s time to go. And as they step outside, she looks at him and smiles broadly, and he laughs with joy, and they both step forward into the sunshine together.

They stay together – not just she and him, but the whole gang. A week-long transatlantic boat ride, then a cross-country transport take them to a remote part of the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. There, five houses wait for them, sunny and spacious, with curtains billowing in from the warm ocean breeze, surrounded by rainforest and palms. And as the sun sets and the sky turns lavender, he looks at her, and he gets down on one knee and pulls out a small gold ring smelted from the Spanish National Reserve.

She nods vigorously. She cries. His heart leaps out of his chest, and they kiss, passionately, and he pulls her to him. She responds with urgency, pressing against him, and then she whispers in his ear that her chest no longer hurts, and this time, he believes her.

He carries her inside, kissing her, and drops her onto a bed looking out at the ocean. He takes the bandages off her chest, gently, and kisses her scars, and she looks at him with warmth in her eyes and pulls him towards her. And they make love – gently at first, slowly, holding her in his arms, gazing into each other’s eyes. And then urgently, passionately, their desires burning, moving together rhythmically, neither of them leading nor following, but rather each working together in a beautiful dance, building on each other’s movements. She cries out, but it’s from pleasure, not from pain, and he follows soon after, and then they fall together, and he holds her, and he looks into her eyes, and she’s smiling, and he’s smiling, and the sun dips below the horizon.

They marry three months later, on the beach, surrounded by their odd little family. As he sees her coming towards him, dressed in white, glowing, he swells, and sheds a tear. He takes her hands in his, and she beams at him, and they vow to hold each other forever. And then they drink and they dance and they sing and they laugh, and it’s the happiest day of his life.

She’s pregnant within a month, and everyone ribs him, but her joy is uncontainable. He’s been a father seven times over, but this time is different – he’d never before had a child with a woman he loved. He indulges her cravings, cooking her elaborate meals and hunting down strange ingredients, he rubs her feet, they sit on the floor together practicing birthing techniques until they’re both laughing so hard he’s worried it’ll come out right there in front of them.

It’s a girl – a tiny, perfect little angel. They name her Ibiza, and seeing her holding that tiny creature, gazing at it softly, he’s overcome by joy. A little over a year later, she’s followed by a brother, Mykonos, then two years after that, by another sister, Havana. Then they adopt a dog from a local shelter – Cairo. Soon the house is full, overrun by little monkeys splashing in the pool and running up and down the beach, laughing and shrieking.

She directs them all around like a marshall, coordinating children with the same energy she once used for coordinating the melting of gold. He’s the softie, especially with the girls, but the one thing he’s strict about is that they must always respect their mother. She didn’t survive a sniper bullet to the chest just to give birth to a bunch of whiners. They’re a good team, she and him, and they keep the passion alive, flirting and teasing each other even ten years later. These days, they get their adrenaline fixes from surfing and riding motorcycles on the beach-lined roads, racing each other just to feel the wind on their faces.

And every year for Christmas, the whole family comes together. They roast a pig, and they dance, and they eat for hours, reminiscing and telling stories of their heists. It all seems so far away now, with the breeze wafting in from the ocean and the fairy lights twinkling in the palm trees as children kick a ball around on the sand. She has the same energy and spirit as always, and as they raises their glasses, they toast to family. She looks at him, and she smiles, and they kiss.

That’s one version of reality – the one that could have been.

In the other version, the body falling to the floor isn’t Gandia – it’s her.

Time seems to stop as her body hits the floor, her eyes vacant and unseeing, a dark hole in the center of her forehead. He sinks, shell-shocked. 

He feels everything, and somehow also nothing, as if there’s a point in which the two are the same, the way all colors together turn to white. 

The pain hits him in the chest, momentarily halting his breathing. The others scream and cry, but he just stares, numb. 

She plays in his mind like a film reel. Her sparkling eyes, her laugh, the way she’d throw her head back in joy. The way she sang and danced, moving her hips and raising her arms, eyes closed as she felt the music. Her passion, her vigor, her honesty. Her warmth. Her determination. Her courage.

He takes a deep, shaking breath, and turns away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As before, please let me know if you enjoy, and if you have requests for future POVs!


	3. Helsinki

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is by far the longest chapter, because they go through SO MUCH together. That made it both more challenging and more interesting to write in many ways, especially since so much of their relationship development took place off-screen. It's a much deeper relationship than the two previous chapters, and I hope the strength of their gradual bond comes through in this. I had a lot of fun writing their two years of traveling together, and I hope you'll enjoy my take on their journey.

_Chapter 3: Helsinki_

He and his cousin are on the outside of the group, the only foreigners. The others don’t often make an effort to draw them in, but when someone does, it’s usually her. She has a lively sense of humor, and he develops a fondness for her. She flirts with him a bit before realizing he plays for the other team – she doesn’t bother hiding her surprise, and her expression makes him chuckle – but if anything, they seem to get closer once she knows he’ll only ever be a friend. She helps him with his Spanish and he teaches her to curse in Serbian. The words mangle in her mouth, and she laughs.

She’s different from the other young ones, he realizes. Tokyo, Rio, Denver – they still have the recklessness of those who have always gotten away with things. They’d never felt the confines of a prison, never spent weeks alone in solitary confinement with nothing to think of but the choices that led them there. There’s a darkness that they don’t know of yet. Berlin, Moscow – they know it. He and his cousin know it. And she knows it, too – behind her teasing and her laughter, she has a hardness to her, a steeliness of the kind that only steel bars can forge. He respects that.

They smoke cigarettes together and swap prison stories with a natural ease between them. She’s closer with the others, he knows – with Tokyo and the two younger boys. But it’s nice that she tries to include him. She asks what he and Oslo will do once they’re rich, and he shrugs. He’ll send some money to his family in Serbia, he tells her. And with the rest? Travel the world. She smiles. She has a good heart.

The first two days inside the mint go more or less smoothly. She spends most of her time in the factory, working with the machines, but he relieves her every few hours for a break. She’s the only one here besides Berlin who seems to be genuinely enjoying herself – as he catches her writing numbers on the window of her office, she grins widely and blows him a kiss. He chuckles to himself.

Tensions gradually rise between the others though. He’s a soldier by training, not a thief, and his duty is to the plan, not to the people – so he follows his orders. He’s not here to judge. The Professor put Berlin in charge for a reason, and the plan is to follow him, so he does.

So when she runs after Berlin, shouting hoarsely about a jacket, and Berlin orders her to stay, he points his gun at her. She nearly runs into it, before backing up, surprised. She appeals to his conscience with her eyes, distraught. His heart wavers. He holds the gun firm – an order is an order – but he backs away. She’s right – he wouldn’t shoot her.

But he’s loyal to the plan alone. That is, until everything falls apart.

It starts with a bang in the loading dock. Rio runs into the hall where he’s guarding the hostages and yells “ _vamos, vamos!_ ” with a frenetic energy. They run down and find the hostages missing and a gaping hole in the door. In the hustle and confusion to close the door, the police start shooting. His cousin is missing, and he runs to find his cousin, but the metal sheet falls and he’s knocked over by the force of multiple bullets to the chest. He hears her screaming for him. She runs across the room towards him, firing desperately at the police, then crouches down over him, tugging at his jumpsuit.

The vest stopped the bullets, and he can see the relief on her face. Then a barrage of gunfire rains on them, and they both flatten themselves for cover. She’s clutching onto him, afraid, and he instinctively puts a hand over the back of her head for protection.

Eventually they manage to hoist up the door and drill it shut, but his cousin is still missing. He runs, looking for his cousin, and stops in his tracks when he sees him lying on the ground, still, surrounded by blood. He sinks. 

His cousin is in bad shape, and he sits with him in the breakroom all night, refusing to leave his side. She comes in, late in the wee hours of the morning, off from another shift on the machines. She hands him a coffee wordlessly and rests a hand on his shoulder, gently comforting him. Then she helps him fix his cousin’s bandages, cleaning his wound meticulously, saying soothing words all the while. And she sits with him for over an hour. She says little, but he can tell she feels his pain, and he appreciates it. The sun is rising before she finally nods off beside him in one of the chairs.

She’s the one who drags Berlin back into the breakroom later that day to try to persuade him to release Oslo to doctors. He appreciates her campaign to get his cousin help, and he sees the pain in her eyes at seeing one of her teammates suffer. Her heart is in the right place. But his cousin would prefer death to prison. He looks her in the eyes, and she nods. She understands. He holds her face for a moment, to convey his gratitude.

He goes to a dark place over the next twenty-four hours, grief and exhaustion taking him down a lonely road. The others are so caught up in their own dramas that they barely seem to notice when he asphyxiates his cousin. But she sees him. She seeks him out in the office where he’s sitting, staring into space, barely holding on. She takes his head and looks into his eyes and says “ _Lo siento_ ,” and he knows she means it. She lets him know that she is there for him, that she’s going to get this back on track, and that she needs his help. He takes her hand in his and looks her in the eyes. “For Oslo,” he says.

She hits Berlin in the head with an impressive blow and takes over command. Then she’s in charge, and he must say, she’s a good leader. She has Berlin’s strength and confidence but without his ruthlessness. He’d follow her into a war.

That night, though, he finds her sitting in her office with her head in her hands and tears in her eyes. He doesn’t want to intrude, but he remembers how she had helped him the previous night, so he quietly returns with a coffee and a pat on the shoulder. To his surprise, she starts crying and she hugs him. They talk, really talk, for the first time. She tells him about her son, about how she’d had a plan to go find him but now she doesn’t know what to do. He tells her about Oslo, about his memories of them growing up together, about the time his cousin saved his life in the war, about the sense of humor they never got to appreciate because it never quite translated. He cries as well, and they hold each other, and he doesn’t know how to tell her how much he appreciates that she cares.

The next day, as she’s leading a meeting of the team, he watches her commanding the room, and he wonders if she’d consider sticking together after the heist. Neither of them have plans anymore. And he knows from experience that the only thing worse than losing someone you love is being forced to grieve alone. 

But he doesn’t have time to bring it up with her before things go awry again after Tokyo returns and Moscow becomes the second team member to sustain a life-threatening injury. There’s a push to get out of the mint quickly, and they’re up all night, taking shifts digging the tunnel and moving money. He tries to catch her eye several times as he’s moving the money down to the tunnel, but she’s focused on her work.

Then it’s time to go. And as they load the last packs of money into the tunnel, he finally asks about her plans after the heist. She pauses and smiles, touched, but doesn’t have time to answer, because Berlin appears outside the vault. She goes to get him, but Berlin refuses to leave. He feels more respect for Berlin in that moment than he ever has before, and takes a moment to appreciate a good captain protecting his troops. But she’s never been a soldier, and she’s just scared to lose another teammate, and she protests. So he picks her up with a heavy heart and pulls her into the vault.

She’s crying, and he takes her face in his. “I know,” he says simply. She nods, and they enter the tunnel. They run through it, hand in hand, then minutes later they emerge in the hangar, breathless.

He and the Professor drive the truck across the country, to the small port in Galicia where they had all been instructed to meet. The others take cars, cars the professor had strategically dotted around the neighborhood surrounding the hangar. When she arrives, she’s whooping. She jumps into his arms and he spins her around. They did it.

They’ll be traveling together, the Professor tells them on the boat. She looks back at him and laughs. He doesn’t tell her how glad he is. How relieved he is that he won’t be alone. How the grief hasn’t released him yet, but her presence makes it better, sometimes.

They dock at a small fishing port in the Azores and split into two boats. Theirs heads south to Casablanca with Rio and Tokyo. They dock in Casablanca for forty-eight hours, and it’s like three caged animals being released – they do more, and faster, than he thought possible. She drags him shopping, spending euros like they’re funny money, delighting at every fine thing she can now buy. She replaces her rings with gold ones, replaces her faux fur with the real deal, replaces her heart-shaped sunglasses with Dior ones, all the while throwing men’s shirts into his arms. Then the three of them drag him to a nightclub, and it’s loud and dark but they get a table in the VIP area and tell him he doesn’t have to dance if he doesn’t want to. She dances – she dances for hours, like she’s releasing something pent up. Then she introduces him to Rémi, whom she’s just met, and he wants to tell her to be careful, but he holds his tongue and he goes back to their hotel room alone. 

By the time she returns at 10am the next morning, heels in hand, he’s already questioning the safety and necessity of the no phones rule. He buys a pair of satellite phones off of a Libyan in the market. “Just in case,” he tells her. She tells him it’s a bad idea, but her eyes are full of affection as she does.

They have a scare that afternoon – he notices a security guard staring at Tokyo and speaking into a radio, and the four of them run through the market. After that, they decide it’s time to split up. Rio and Tokyo’s faces have been all over the international news for days now. Theirs haven’t. They can go places, do things that the other two can’t. They say good-bye, and none of them know whether it’s forever.

And then it’s just him and her. She wants to go everywhere, she tells him. She’d never left Spain before. Eyes shining, she tells him about how they’ll go to Dubai, and India, and New York, and Japan. They’ll go surfing in Australia and climb mountains in Peru, they’ll party in Miami and sing karaoke in Seoul. And of course, they’ll go to Nairobi – she wants to see her city. It sounds like a whirlwind, a perfect distraction from the pain they’re both still holding onto.

There are quiet moments, too, though. As their boat passes the Canary Islands, she’s quiet. He asks her if she’s changing her mind, but she shakes her head. She grabs his hand and squeezes it, and he lets her hold it for as long as she needs. Maybe he needs it, too.

They dock in San Juan and spend a month among the colorful houses and azure seas of Puerto Rico. It’s there that they realize that it’s okay to slow down, that the pain won’t necessarily take them back if they stop moving and spend an afternoon reading by the sea – or that if it does, maybe that’s just part of the process. She still tenses every time a little boy passes, laughing or kicking a ball. He still chokes back tears every time his cousin’s face passes through his mind.

They get tattoos together. She has one already, she shows him – 14-06-2009, her son’s birthdate finely printed just below the scar on her hip. He shows her the tattoos he’s accumulated over the years; she howls with laughter when he shows her his bear for the first time. Together, they get a verse of Italian lyrics printed finely across their lower ribcages: “E questo è il fiore del partigiano, morto per la libertà.” This is the flower of the partisan, who died for our freedom. Above it, they each get a small rose in crimson red.

Then the holidays are nearing and she wants to see snow, so they leave the islands. Another boat ride takes them to Miami, where they spend several days drinking champagne and dancing to thumping music that he doesn’t understand. There’s another Rémi here – his name is different, but his tight t-shirt and gym rat arms are similar. He worries, but he doesn’t judge. Then they buy a car – a black Ferrari – and drive north. They stop often, at theme parks and bizarre roadside attractions and country barbeque joints where the waitresses hear their Spanish and shoot them dirty looks. Her English is terrible, he learns, so she leans on him. By mid-December, they arrive in New York City just as the first snowfall hits the ground, lending an eerie quiet to the city’s streets. They stay at the Plaza and shop on Fifth Avenue and dine at the best restaurant in the world. They see five Broadway shows, because they can, and soon she’s walking around humming. She buys him an expensive watch, and he buys her diamond earrings, but on Christmas day they sit at a bar and eat hamburgers and try to ignore how their newfound wealth doesn’t fill the emptiness in their lives.

Months roll by, and slowly she goes from being a friend to being a sister. They learn each other’s rhythms. He learns that she loves spicy food – while they’re traveling in the states she takes to carrying hot sauce in her purse because “nothing here has any flavor.” He learns that she’s somehow both a night owl and a morning person, waking from a deep slumber with more energy than he feels like he’s ever had in his life. He learns that she likes fruity drinks, though she pretends not to, that she paints her fingernails every five days religiously, that she cries every time she watches the movie _Titanic_ , and that she gets cranky when she’s hungry. She prefers red wine to white, but champagne to either. She listens to an eclectic blend of Spanish guitar music, sonorous love ballads, and 90’s pop, singing along to the latter with her eyes closed and her hands in the air. She likes Tarantino movies, but always ends up watching through her fingers when it gets to the gory parts, spitting out a stream of disgusted curses under her breath.

They road trip across the states and spend three months in California wine country, then drive south to Mexico, where they spend another few months in a resort town on the Pacific coast.

They learn each other’s stories piece by piece, like a slow puzzle. They celebrate her son’s eighth birthday in June with cupcakes and tequila, and then she cries for an hour and he just holds her. She tells him about her mother, who ran a flea market stall and stole wallets and cell phones from customers to make ends meet. She tells him about her father, a junkie who she barely knew, and her half-siblings, who she grew up taking care of but couldn’t keep off the streets. She tells him about her son’s father, her ex-husband, who’s jealousy and possessiveness escalated to violence before she left him in her second trimester.

He tells her his story too, though he holds things back. There are horrors of war that he still can’t speak of. He tells her of his family in Belgrade, of his brothers and sisters who he still sends money to, of his childhood in Yugoslavia, of his memories of his cousin who fought beside him and served time beside him.

And by late summer he notices that sometimes when she’s drunk, she holds onto him just a little too tightly, curls into him just a little too familiarly, looks into his eyes with just a little too much shine in them. His heart aches for her. He knows all too well the pain of loneliness, the way it makes you seek love in impossible places. He gently peels her away, but doesn’t stop her from pulling him forward to dance.

There are more Rémis everywhere they go – there was Dante in New York, Jake in Nashville, Luca in California, Javier in Mexico. She never takes them back with her to wherever they’re staying at the time, she merely disappears for a few hours. Sometimes it’s one night, sometimes it’s two dozen, but it doesn’t seem like the extensions make any difference. She doesn’t talk about them with him. “It’s just sex,” she says dismissively any time he inquires.

In Mexico, he meets a man as well, and falls for him hard and fast. She cheers for him as he goes for long walks on quiet beaches, staying out all night and not returning until late the next afternoon, all light and smiley. They dissect every detail of his love life together, and she urges him to pursue this man, to stop overthinking things and go for it. He’s a soft, gooey marshmallow, and all he knows is that he wants to stick himself to this man and stay by his side, loving him for as long as he’s allowed to. And then suddenly it’s over, and he’s hurt, and she’s furious at the man who made him feel this way, and they decide to keep traveling.

They’re in Colombia for the one-year anniversary of the heist. They rent a large old colonial house in Bogotá with a courtyard and a fountain, but it’s just the two of them and neither of them know quite what to do with themselves. They watch an old Serbian movie that had been his cousin’s favorite, and they eat arepas and smoke a joint and she falls asleep on the sofa with her head in his lap.

She’s getting restless, he can tell. She’s drinking more, and more often. These days when they arrive in a new place, her first question is where they can find weed. They’ve both spent their entire lives in a struggle for survival, and now that they have enough money to last the rest of their lives and nowhere they need to be, they’re discovering that a life of luxury comes with its own demons. They’re in Cusco for the holidays when he finally, gently confronts her about it after she pours her fifth glass of wine for the evening on a random Tuesday. She gets defensive and angry, and he quiets, but she’s fired up now and things start pouring out, and he shuts down, stonewalling her while she throws acerbic words at him. He walks out of the room, and she tries to follow him, angry, but then he yells back, his voice bellowing, and her eyes go big and she starts crying. And he feels awful, and she feels awful, and they agree not to fight like that anymore.

The central square lights up for Christmas and the markets fill with carved nativity sets. They buy matching alpaca sweaters and drink Pisco sours and she tries to teach him her favorite Christmas carols, but he can’t carry a tune.

She cuts back on the drinking. They start going for long hikes instead, exploring the ancient ruins of Peru. She’s a high-maintenance hiker, but he carries half her load and it’s worth it when they watch the sun rise over the peaks of the Andes. She exclaims, and grasps his arm, and he puts a hand on her shoulder, and he thinks about how in all his years of life he’s never felt this close to another human before.

He meets a man on the trails in Peru, a German hiker named Felix who shares his coca tea with them. Felix is staying not far from them and they all meet for drinks once they’re back in Cusco. She can tell immediately that he’s interested in their new friend, and she encourages him to go for it. But he hesitates. The German may like men, but that doesn’t mean he’ll want _him_. She shakes her head and tells him he needs to love himself more. She looks sad when she says it. He thinks of her latest Rémi, a Chilean backpacker, and doesn’t tell her that she should consider taking her own advice.

They’re both growing tired. The luxury hotels and rental villas all blend together, the food at the expensive restaurants all starts to taste the same, and half the fun of shopping, she admits, used to be searching for bargains.

Then one day he brings up the idea of buying some land together and settling down. “We can’t be nomads forever,” he says. “Maybe it would be good for us to drop some roots.” She smiles. She agrees. They search for over a month before finally pulling the trigger – they buy a ranch in Argentina, a vast acreage of fields with a lake and a view of mountains. The air is fresher here, the night sky darker. They buy horses and sheep, and soon they spend their days riding and herding. She’s good with the horses – she tends to them like they’re her children, and they intuitively seem to understand her movements when she rides. He’s much clumsier, but he has a soft spot for the sheep.

They hire ranch hands and get to know the people in the nearest village. It’s a much quieter life than the one they’d led for nearly a year and a half, traveling the world like a pair of jetsetters. But they’re both happier here. She comes back from the stables laughing and spattered in mud, and he learns to cook _asado_ on an open fire. 

And slowly, the months pass. They shear the sheep and she decides to try her hand at knitting. She makes him a scarf, and it’s crooked and lumpy but he loves it. Whenever they get bored, they trade in their gauchos for Gucci and drive to the city for a weekend to eat at nice restaurants and shop and while away the evenings at dimly lit bars. But for all her complaining about not getting laid, they don’t get bored that often anymore. They figure out how to keep themselves occupied in a life of leisure, inventing tasks and goals for themselves just to continue having a purpose. The animals help, as does the knitting, which she gets slowly better at, singing to herself as she works, poking fun at herself for turning into an _abuela_. She quits smoking, and spends a week being angry at everyone for everything, but says she feels healthier than she has in years.

They decide to go on a trip in August – a vacation, she calls it, though this makes him laugh and ask her from what. He suggests they go to Nairobi, but she says she’s been to Africa now, but she still hasn’t seen Asia. So they charter a flight from Buenos Aires, and spend two weeks eating the best sushi in Tokyo and singing karaoke until the wee hours of the morning in Seoul.

But he’s relieved to be home when they get back to the ranch. They’ve outfitted the large house on the property with soft, comfortable furnishings, mixed with touches of glamour the way she likes it, and it feels like home in a way nothing ever has for him. They spend evenings curled up together, streaming television shows, their bodies always tired in that satisfying way that comes from a day of hard work followed by a good meal.

But there’s something about the way she curls into him lately that reminds him of the way he curls into the man he’s been seeing here, a rancher in the next town over named Paco. He wonders if she curls into the men she sleeps with that way, or if this gesture of intimacy is just for him. It pains him sometimes, she way he sees her eyes brighten when he comes in from the pastures, or the way she’s taken to rubbing his shoulders after dinner. She claims that it’s because his neck gets so sore from working with the sheep all day, but it’s not hard to see the thinly veiled excuse for skin-to-skin contact. He looks down and says nothing.

He understands it, of course. He understands it better than anyone, maybe even better than she does. He’d spent years of his life in love with men who could never love him back, and he’d never wish it on anyone. So he starts gently encouraging her to date – “really date,” he says. “Let a man take you to dinner. Talk to him. Go on a long walk together and see what you have in common.” Something in her resists the idea. She’s scared, he realizes. Scared of being vulnerable. Scared of getting hurt. She tries it – she goes on a handful of real dates over the next few months, but none of them go anywhere. She finds a problem with each of them, a non-negotiable that he privately thinks she could negotiate if she really wanted to.

Their third Christmas comes and goes. They decorate a tree and listen to carols and roast a suckling pig, but it’s way too much meat for two. She gives him two sweaters – one she knit, and one she bought, and though the second one is baby cashmere and its label says Prada, he prefers the one she made.

The village has a festival for _Día de Reyes_ , and they dress in their Argentinian best and spend the night drinking and dancing with the villagers. She spins and laughs, downing beers, until she’s swaying a bit and he urges her to come sit for a while. Many of the villagers assume they’re married, and he tells her it’s for the best. But then she takes his hand in hers and her eyes go soft and she calls it a love story, and he knows she doesn’t mean the platonic kind. His heart breaks for her as he shakes his head. As he looks into her eyes, he wills her to keep her heart open, and not to let it close around his. She deserves a real love story.

They decide to go on another trip, and this time she agrees – they need to go to Nairobi. They book a charter for April to give themselves time to plan. But then one day in early February, a man shows up at their door. For a moment they exchange glances, and she grabs the pistols they still keep on hand, handing him one furtively. But then the man says the code phrase and tells them that he’s been sent by the Professor, and that he’s going to take them with him to go meet the others.

They arrive in Palawan a week later, after a long boat ride and several cross-country transports. They’re so excited to see the others that they speed onto the dock their boat is leaving from, whooping, and he drives the car right into the water. She curses him, but she’s laughing as she pulls herself out of the water and hugs Tokyo like a lost sister.

The reason for their presence is explained over dinner that evening, and they exchange a glance as they learn about Rio’s capture. She’s the first to agree to the rescue mission, as bold and loving as ever, and he follows her, because they’re family, and he’d follow her anywhere.

They spend five days in Palawan, swimming in the turquoise ocean, catching up with Tokyo and Denver, and getting to know Stockholm and Lisbon, while the Professor locks himself away to plot. Then another week later, they arrive in Florence.

There are three newcomers to the group, and one of them quickly makes his interest known during dinner. He stares at Palermo for a second, not knowing how to respond, and once he sits down, she raises her eyebrows and grins at him, and he already knows where this is going. Sure enough, she pushes him to knock on Palermo’s door at night. He puts it off, unsure of the authenticity of the other man’s interest. She’s impatient with him, telling him the other man clearly wants him, and that he should take the opportunity in front of him. “If I’m not getting laid for two months, at least _you_ should,” she says.

He doesn’t bother pointing out that Bogota has been flirting with her non-stop and he’s not sure how it’s different. She’s too proud, or too scared, or too self-assured, or some combination of the three. She wouldn’t hear it anyway.

But finally, he knocks on Palermo’s door one night. And then one night becomes two, and then ten, and then twenty. And every time, he leaves afterwards, crawling back to their room with his clothes and shoes in hand, trying to sneak into bed without waking her. But sometimes she does wake, and she always sighs bitterly. One night she asks if he loves Palermo. He can’t answer, and he’s not sure if it’s because saying it out loud would cause her too much pain, or because it would cause him too much pain.

She hates Palermo, it soon becomes clear. She says it’s because he’s a sexist asshole, but he can’t help but remember the way she always managed to work with Berlin and wonder if there’s another reason for her distaste. After she throws a slipper at Palermo in the corridor at night, the two take to bickering through him, each complaining to him about the other like a pair of divorced parents.

Finally, he tells her that Palermo was in love with Berlin. It had become obvious as he’d gotten to know the other man – it was obvious from the way Palermo mentioned Berlin in conversation every chance he got, from the way he stared longingly at Berlin’s portrait in class, from the way he spoke of their friendship with a strange possessive bitterness. “He was in love with a man who could never love him back,” he tells her, and in her eyes he sees a glimmer of recognition. She turns away and makes a scathing comment, but she stops complaining about Palermo quite so much.

She’ll be managing the gold extraction during this heist, and she’s been learning the welding process from Bogota. As the weeks go by, he watches the pair working together, talking and teasing as she orders him around, and sees the way the man looks at her with a softness in his eyes. He brings it up with her one night, finally, and she waves it away dismissively. “He’s just a macho asshole. He flirts like that with everyone, even Lisbon.” He hasn’t seen Bogota looking at Lisbon that way, but he decides not to push the matter.

Then one night, they’re getting ready for bed together when she asks him out of the blue if he’s ever thought about having children. He’s immediately on guard about where this might be going, but he answers honestly that though he likes children, he’d never considered having one because well, for one thing it just wasn’t a physical possibility in any of his relationships, but also because his life never seemed suited to it. She sits down on her bed and looks at him with big eyes and asks if he’d consider raising a family with her. And, as if to delay his inevitable response, she quickly starts describing her urge to be a mother again, how when they go back to their ranch, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a baby there with them, and they could get a dog, and have a bunch of kids, and it would give meaning to their life after all this, and they could continue to see other people, of course, it wouldn’t be a relationship in the normal sense, they could conceive in vitro, but they’re already family, aren’t they, and wouldn’t this just be cementing that?

He closes his eyes and puts his head in his hands, because she deserves more than an in vitro child with her gay best friend who is in love with someone else. He takes her hands in his and tells her that he’s not going to be responsible for messing up her shot at having a real family and a real marriage. “I’ll always be there for you,” he tells her. “But be patient, _pequeña_. You’ll find someone.”

She sighs and climbs into her bed and lets it drop. But for the following week, she’s unusually distant. When he tiptoes into the bedroom at two in the morning, she just rolls over and pretends to be asleep.

Then, three days before the heist, he’s getting into bed and the air between them is still heavy, and then she says “Helsi?” and she sits up.

“I’m sorry, Helsi,” she says, her eyes earnest. “I’ve been pushing you away, and you don’t deserve it. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Helsi. No one’s ever cared about me like this. No one. You’re my family; these people, we’re a family, more of a family than I’ve ever had before. And it’s been making me think a lot about family, and how I want one. I want a real one. I want children, Helsi, I want to be a mother again, and do it right this time. And I don’t need to be in love to do that. I’ve found a way to do it, on my own. And if we go back to Argentina and we stay together, you can be as much a part of my child’s life as you want to be – you’ll be her _Tio_ , always. But I want this for me, Helsi, just for me,” she says. And then she smiles, but her eyes prickle with tears, and his heart melts and he puts everything aside and pulls her into a hug and congratulates her and tells her she’ll be an incredible mother. And he means it.

And then the heist begins. In some ways it’s much like the first one – entering in disguise, pulling guns, ushering screaming hostages. But in other ways, it’s completely different. That time, they’d avoided personal relationships with each other, keeping most of their conversations together strictly related to the heist. This time, they’re a complicated and loving, if slightly dysfunctional, family.

That dysfunction comes to a head after Palermo beats one of the guards with his makeshift walking stick and she tells him off angrily. He watches them go at each other, feeling massively uncomfortable as they both start using him as a pawn in what he senses is, deep down, a strange power struggle between them about much more than the words they’re saying. They’re more similar than either of them would ever care to admit, with their impossible loves and their meaningless lovers. They each see what they hate most about themselves in the other. But she’s the one who emerges stronger from this fight, because unlike Palermo, she’s not afraid to confront the truth. She turns to him and says “ _Te quiero_ ,” and her eyes are full of pain and his heart breaks, but he’s proud of her. She does have courage. She has courage in spades, and she’s grabbing life by the horns and getting her happy ending, everyone else be damned.

Or at least, she tries to.

The moment he sees her rushing down the stairs, her voice urgent and strained, trying to push past all of them to grab the teddy bear herself, he understands. He restrains her, and tries to reason with her with his eyes. She can tell he understands, and she gives him a look of steely determination, but he shakes his head slightly. They wouldn’t send her son’s teddy bear in for any reason except to hurt her, or try to break her, or blackmail her. He pulls her aside to let Palermo handle the situation. “ _Tranquilo_ ,” he whispers to her, but every muscle of hers is tense.

Her eyes don’t leave the bear as it’s taken inside and run through the metal detector. He squeezes her shoulder and tries to calm her. It’s just a phone. A phone can’t hurt them, at least, not physically. He opens the bear, feeling her hovering apprehensively, and pulls out a bag of red pills. He doesn’t understand, but he looks up at her and he can tell she does.

Then the phone rings, and she grabs it and curses at the inspector, before grabbing the bear and moving to storm away. He’s shocked, not understanding the effect this is clearly having on her. She pulls her gun on Palermo with a fierce look in her eyes, and Palermo allows her to leave. Stockholm goes after her, and he’s left open-mouthed, confused. 

Then, five minutes later, there’s screams, and his heart drops, and he runs. She’s lying on the floor, covered in blood, and his face drains, and he rushes to her.

The next five minutes are a blur, a blur of blood and terror and surging adrenaline, as she lays dying in his arms while they desperately try to stop the bleeding.

He wasn’t ready for this. As she gives him her dying instructions to find her son, he feels hot tears streaming down his cheeks. God, he wasn’t ready for this.

They move her frantically to the room where the medical supplies have been set up. His hands are covered in blood, her blood, and he takes a deep breath in, because he needs to keep them steady. She’s gasping, her heartrate climbing, and he can’t look at her face because he knows if he does the tears will return and he won’t be able to see.

They stabilize her, and she pleads with them to release her to the police.

Palermo enters, asserting his command, ordering him to put her under, and something snaps, because he hears her voice in his ear, telling him to stand up to that asshole. Maybe it’s easier for him when it’s her he’s standing up for. He shouts at Palermo, because he’d trusted him, because he’d put his faith in the plan and in the leader a second time, and for the second time, he was about to lose the person who meant the most to him in the world because of it.

In a single beat, Palermo calls him a whore and her an idiot, and pulls his gun on him, and his heart breaks, because she’s been right this whole time, and he just wishes he could rewind everything and go back to Argentina and just be there, with her, with their horses and their sheep and her knitting, where everything was safe and quiet and she was laughing.

But in the end, they decide to operate. She cries, frightened, helpless, begging them to release her, and his heart is heavy as he kisses her forehead and speaks to her soothingly as they inject her with anesthetic. And she falls quiet, and her face muscles relax, and he finally allows himself to cry again, because that might have been the last time he’d ever hear her voice.

But he only allows himself a brief moment. He steels himself, and they operate, cutting her open and removing a chunk of her lung. He turns his feelings off, the way he used to do in the war, and sews her closed. As the others wheel her away, he closes his eyes for a moment, and says a prayer. Then he hugs Tokyo, because he sees his own pain mirrored in her eyes.

She remains unconscious for more than twenty-four hours, and they’re all forced to resume their other work. He stops Palermo from leaving, because he can’t stand to lose another person he loves in this heist. But every hour that passes in which her heartbeat remains steady gives him another ounce of hope. He checks in with Tokyo as often as he can manage. They take shifts sitting with her through the night. Bogota comes in frequently too, standing in the corner as if unsure whether he’s allowed to be there, nodding respectfully at him. He gives the other man a sad smile, recognizing a feeling in his eyes and wishing she’d been able to see it herself.

Then the next afternoon, suddenly Tokyo’s heart monitor starts beeping rapidly, and they all run to her side. She’s awake, and for a split second he feels joy at that fact, but her heart is beating too fast, she’s gasping for air, and she’s spattered with blood. He strokes her head, relieved that she’s alive, and tries to soothe her. “Gandia,” she tells them, gasping. He runs after Gandia with Tokyo, and nearly dies himself in the process after a noose is thrown around his neck. But Bogota helps them, and Tokyo cuts him down, and the three of them return to her side.

She’s okay, she says, and her breathing is steadied but still raspy. Paquita treats the rope cuts on his neck with antibiotic as she looks on, concerned for him. But when she seeks comfort, he notices she reaches for Bogota, not him. It makes him happier than she could know.

The hunt for Gandia continues, until Tokyo disappears, and they all gather to regroup. Then the Professor alerts them as to how Gandia escaped, and he wants to scream at Palermo, because he _gets_ it, he understands pain, he understands fear, he understands the hunger of wanting someone and never receiving their love, but he wishes Palermo could just pause for a minute and find the courage to be the good man he knows is in there. He almost _died_ ; _she_ almost died.

They split up again to move the hostages and continue the search, but before he leaves he checks in on her. She smiles as he asks about Bogota. “We’ll see,” she says, but her eyes are dancing in a way he hasn’t seen before. He squeezes her hand affectionately and tells her to hang in there.

He doesn’t realize when he says it that the next time he sees her face, it will be stuffed through a hole in a bathroom door, bloodied and in pain.

The whole thing is torture. It’s sadistic and inhumane and psychopathic. She’s weak, she’s injured; she wasn’t a threat. Gandia takes her hostage to force their hand, but he’s a madman, and he puts a bullet through her hand then toys with them maniacally. He makes them wait, crouching, terrified, witnessing her face screwed up in pain but unable to do anything about it. She’s fierce, and she taunts Gandia through her pain – he’d expect no less – but nothing seems to fix the stalemate.

Then, finally, Gandia drags her out, his gun pointed at the nape of her neck. They follow him, tense, crouching, guns lowered but fingers ready.

And then Gandia releases her, and she takes a shaking step forward, and for a split second he thinks she’s going to be okay.

And then there’s a bang, and before he even understands what happened instinct kicks in and he shoots, he shoots frantically at the madman, hoping that the shot he just heard wasn’t what he thinks it was.

But she falls to the ground, and it takes a moment for him to register the image. But when he does, it’s like his lungs stop working, and he falls to the ground, taking her hand in his, and it’s still warm, it still feels like her, it’s the same hand he’s held a million times – it’s the same hand that comforted him in the Royal Mint after his cousin’s death, the same hand he grasped as they crossed the Atlantic ocean together to start a new life, the same hand that pulled him into a million shops and nightclubs, the same hand that used to wave in the air as she sang old pop songs as they drove down a California highway in an open-air Ferrari, the same hand he held as they watched the sunrise over the Andes, the same hand that rubbed his shoulders in the evenings, the same hand that she’d instinctively rested on her stomach as she told him she wanted to be a mother again. But this time it doesn’t grasp him back – it falls, limp, lifeless.

And the pain hits him like a thousand knives, and he doubles over, crying, because it wasn’t supposed to end this way.

**

When it’s all over, he and Palermo return to the ranch in Argentina. It’s dusk when they arrive, and the sky is a clear, cerulean blue. The horses greet them with familiar whinnies, and he feels a pang as he sees her saddle still hanging by the stable door.

They hadn’t cleaned before they left, and the evidence of her life is still everywhere: the magazine and the half-empty bottle of red nail polish on the coffee table; the box of Pocky sticks she liked to snack on still out on the kitchen counter, the small pile of shoes and jackets sitting by the door. He’ll clear it all away tomorrow, he thinks. Tonight, he just needs to rest.

It’s a month before he’s ready to go into her bedroom, and when he finally does, Palermo helps him. He’d rarely gone in there – though she had often poked her head in his room and come in to sit on his bed and talk, he’d always seen her room as her personal space, a place he respected and kept out of. It’s messy – clothes are draped over nearly every surface, makeup clutters her dresser, the bed is unmade. Palermo talks him through the process, setting the ground rules, helping him sort through the items and decide what to do with them. And slowly, they work through the mess, and put things into piles, and put the piles into bags. At first, every item he touches seems sacred, a part of her that ought to be respected, not moved from its final resting place. But he respects the process, and eventually finds catharsis in it.

As they’re cleaning out her nightstand, he finds an envelope containing photos – photos of a toothy, dark-haired little boy clutching a familiar blue teddy bear, photos of a dark-eyed infant who shared her nose, phots of her, holding that child and smiling, laughing, kissing him. There’s a spiderman doll in there, too, and he wonders that she held onto it for all these years.

On June 14, 2027, Axel Jimenez receives an anonymous wire for one-hundred million euros, and an envelope containing a letter from Mirko Dragic and a handful of photos of a bearded man and a laughing woman taken all around the world. As he puts the envelope in the mail, he sighs, and he smiles. He can remember without it aching now. He takes Palermo’s hand, and he squeezes it, and they pour a glass of champagne and toast to Nairobi.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoy, please comment to let me know -- thank you so much!!


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